PUBLIC AUTHORITIES PROTECTION ACT. This British statute was enacted in 1893 and represents, to some extent, a consolidation of previous statutes limiting the time within which actions may be brought against "public authorities," including thereunder local government authorities, justices of the peace and, it has recently been held, Crown servants also. It goes, however, far beyond the particular statutes which it proposed to "generalize and amend" in that it imposes new and most invidious restric tions on any plaintiff who seeks to sue a "public authority" for a wrongful act. These are dealt with in the article Petition of Right. The statute which requires all such actions to be brought within six months does not, however, extend to actions for breach of contract, as distinct from tort by public authorities. Such actions are subject to the ordinary period of limitation prevailing in actions between subject and subject, i.e., private persons, namely six years. The Act has been described as "intended to protect public bodies from expense when they are unsuccessfully sued in respect of acts done or omitted to be done in the exercise of statutory powers or duties" (Lindley M.R. in Fielding v. Morley Corporation, 1899, I Ch. at. p. 4). The description is inadequate, however. As is shown elsewhere (see PETITION OF RIGHT), the statute operates in practice to deter persons wronged from suing at all, and penalizes them on technical grounds with special costs for suing even where they would have had an undoubted cause of action had the action been brought within the prescribed period of time. The "protection" afforded by the statute extends not only to any wrongful acts done "in pursuance or execution or intended execution" of a statutory duty but also in pursuance of any "public" duty or authority. All these terms, as also the question whether the act complained of arises out of a construc tual relation or not, whether it occurred in the execution of a "duty" or merely in the exercise of a "power," as also the rela tion between a "continuing" act and "continuous" damage, have been the subject of endless litigation. The "protection," in other words the privilege, conferred by the statute extends not only to a public authority but also to all officers and servants acting under its orders. (J. H. Mo.)
PUBLIC HEALTH. The term as used in Great Britain connotes in the broad sense principles and measures which aim at promoting and safeguarding the health of the community in con tra-distinction to those which are concerned in the main with the treatment of declared disease in the individual. For public health in the United States see Section II.
The original conception of public health requirements in Great Britain was fairly simple—the improvement of drainage and sewer age, the provision of adequate and satisfactory water supplies, scavenging, the isolation of cases of infectious disease. Then came the supervision of housing conditions, the clearance of slum areas, the provision of open spaces and the efforts to provide a cleaner atmosphere. More attention is now paid to food supply as in provision for the analysis of f ood-stuffs, in the supervision of the production and distribution of milk, the elimination of tuberculosis from dairy cattle, the control of slaughtering and inspection of meat, the inspection of premises used for the preparation or storage of food. Action regarding infectious disease has passed beyond isolation of the individual attacked and disinfection of premises to the supervision of contacts and careful investigation of possible sources of infection, and the system of port sanitary control has been placed on a scientific basis and all these matters, as they develop, are referred to and accepted as public health measures.
The present century has witnessed public health development in other directions. There has been the growth of activities which aim at the conservation of young life, the early treatment of physical defects, the inculcation of healthy nurture with the object of ensuring healthy citizens. These have found expression in the Maternity and Infant Welfare (q.v.) and the School Medical Services. Public provision has been made for the treatment of certain diseases which, from their economic or social importance, can best be countered by organization on a communal rather than an individual basis, such as tuberculosis, venereal disease, and the crippling effects of infantile paralysis.